During takeoff of an airplane, the pilot must accurately rotate the airplane to a pitch attitude target without under or over-rotating. Accurate rotation achieves optimal take-off field performance and promotes safety of the passengers and crew. A flight director is an avionics feature that generates images on a flight display unit to help the pilot accurately fly the airplane through the various modes of flight. Pilots typically position a flight path marker or a pitch marker on a flight director indicator to achieve the desired rotation during takeoff. Flight path markers, however, are based on the flight path of the airplane. The flight path of the airplane is dissociated from the pitch based rotation task, leaving room for improvement of takeoff performance with flight path based flight directors. Pitch based flight directors are better suited for takeoff performance over flight path based flight directors, but pitch based flight directors provide sub-optimal guidance once the airplane is in flight.
As such, it is desirable to provide avionics systems, controllers, and aircraft that provide improved flight director guidance across pitch and flight path based flight tasks. In addition, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent summary and detailed description, and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background.